Donald Miller uses an illustration in his new book about a movie, and in this movie there is a guy, and this guy really wants a new Volvo. So he takes some extra shifts at work. He spends a little less, saves a little more, and at the end of the movie, do you know what happens? That guy gets himself new Volvo.

How cheated would you feel if you watched a movie and that was the story?

The point is that most of us live these types of stories everyday. Honestly, that thought has been driving me crazy.

Next year I might go live on a boat in a foreign country. Here’s why:

I’ve had an internal problem lately. I just want to scream sometimes because I feel like my life is just a never ending to-do list. Quite honestly, I get kinda bored of my own life. I started this post off with the Jon Foreman quote because it’s a question I ask myself often. I definitely do not have a Lexus, but my life can become a comfortable little cage. I ride the same bus routes, over and over. I frequent the same coffee shops, over and over. I say the same jokes. over. and. over.

I think it’s just that I’ve seen how big the world is. I don’t want to be confined to my cage, especially since the door is now open…

With California’s lovely budget cuts, SF state is not allowing any transfers for spring 2010. That wasn’t exactly welcome news, considering the fact that I’m almost done with my GE requirements and was planning on going to state in spring 2010.

So I began to realized that (whether i liked it or not) I was going to have a semester off. So I started thinking of things I wanted to do. I mean, I’m 20 years old, I can do anything. So I started talking to some people I respect and some people who are well connected, hoping to get some ideas.

I want to do something challenging. Something that would stretch me and amaze me. Something worth writing home about.

In my last post I mentioned my conversation with Rick and my lack of reaction to the rape. San Francisco has a well documented underground sex slave trade. It operates out of hard-to-prosecute massage parlors. Many of those parlors are in my neighborhood. I used to think about it more when I first moved into my apartment. It made me sad, angry even. Nowadays I walk past the same massage parlors at midnight without so much as a second thought. I’ve got Coldplay in my ears and Taco Bell in my hand. What else do I need?

Is my conscious that glazed over? Am I just oblivious? Why are my reactions to things that matter so messed up?

Because I’ve noticed beautiful women since like, what? 5th grade? And I still notice them just as much as I did when I was 11. So why does it take less than a year for me to practically forget about the tragedy’s that play out in my neighborhood on a nightly basis?

I don’t want to live in a cage. I don’t want to live a glazed moral existence.

So I talked, and I thought, and I prayed, and I stressed, and then, I applied. I’ll write more about it if I get accepted (and unfortunately I will probably ask for your money as well) to the Discipleship Training School on Catamarans in Belize.

I just refuse to live out an oddly comfortable existence. I don’t think we were meant to live like that. I don’t think we want to live like that. But boy it sure is comfortable huh?

My friend Stephanie likes to use the term “wanderlust”. I’m not sure if that’s a real word. But it sure sounds good. I’m not sure if I have wanderlust, but I do have a lust for an adventure, for a life worth talking about.

And frankly, the story about the Volvo, or even the Lexus doesn’t seem like it’s worth writing home about. So why do we keep pretending like it is?